


Shade

by meanderingsoul



Series: Intrinsicalities [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Wings, Angelic Grace, Angst, Body Horror, Body Image, Castiel's True Form, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Permanent Injury, Scars, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9665348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Castiel had lived a very long time in this form unchanged. Once, he had been grieved that Sam nor Dean could not see or hear his truest form.But now.Now he wasgrateful.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'd been considering writing something about Castiel and injuries and angels for a while, but _Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets_ just made this fic appear. Minor spoilers for episodes 12x9 and 12x10.

 

Castiel had been grieved at first, when Dean could not see or hear his truest form.

But now.

Now he was _grateful_.

There weren’t words to describe themselves in human English, the angels. He’d never corrected the odd descriptions given in Bobby Singer’s old books. He’d never attempted to describe himself to Sam or Dean after that second attempt to speak to Dean Winchester had also failed.

There weren’t words to describe how they looked or saw or felt, what made one brother or sister, since those human words were poor translations of the original and the sex of the human vessel was entirely irrelevant. Much of his sight was sound and much of his hearing was separate from a mere pattern of vibrations and physical feeling was a distant and immense thing always overshadowed and tempered by turn of this universe and the ebb and flutter of time.

They had colors and shades of colors, but the presence or absence of them was irrelevant. They had limbs, but not always a consistent amount. They had size and density, but it wasn’t a thing that was fixed. He could stand taller than human skyscrapers or fit within a car, a matter of rearranging particles. He had temperature, but it was subject to his own will. Castiel could see and feel and hear in his angelic body, but not the same way he did in a vessel and not the same way humans did at all.

The immediacy of human feeling and need, the urgencies of exhaustion and hunger, the newfound pleasure of water, it had been so foreign.

Knowing that humanity viscerally instead of knowing it as a distant fact had been as much a change as the first time he’d condensed and sank into the confines of a human vessel.

Castiel had lived a very long time in this form unchanged. They did not grow as humans did. Angels came into existence all at once, came forth to be greeted and become part of the Host. They were different at first, but they did not grow. Any angel could tell the age and strength of another from a glance, no matter what form they might be in at the time. The archangels had been agony to gaze upon.

(But it had been so long, so very long since a new angel came forth to be greeted, since Flights had been reorganized to accommodate a new sibling. So very long since the memory he still carried of first tucking Samandiriel under his wing, that Castiel could no longer remember exactly in what ways those new and untried angels looked different.)

Castiel could only describe his true body as a collection of parts, describe those parts in woefully insufficient terms.

Six eyes, each dozens of cubits across at his maximum span. One missing - destroyed by the strain of the Leviathan. One dimmed and blinded - a blow taken in Hell long ago.

Four arms. One on the right badly healed from a wound he could not remember. One on the left partially sheared away. He had been restored to life and Grace and strength after Lucifer’s fatal blow, but those second chances always carried a price.

16 talons. Four chipped from fighting with other angels. One lost in Purgatory. One lost in Heaven.

Six mandibles around his face. Two on the left had healed crookedly after combat with other angels.

Two tails. One shortened by the blow of something ancient contained in Purgatory. He’d fled for days to escape it, opposite the faint hum of longing of Dean’s soul.

Two wings. Two remnants of wings. Hollow, gritty crystalline bones, scorched feathers, scarred flesh badly healed from the Fall.

One halo, the outer aura of the light of his Grace. A perfect circle at 22 degrees, dim and clear.

Some angels seemed to have retained more feathers than others, some more strength, but no matter what was left of the body, that sail of energy around their wings had burned out forever. That precious gift of flight. If there was an ability to heal their kind, a spell, a blessing, no one knew it.

The background song of grief he could hear over ‘angel radio’ never ceased.

He could still remember his scorched wings and arm being a point of badly hidden pride once. He’d harrowed the furthest depths of hell alone and succeeded. Everyone could see it on him.

Every foot soldier of heaven had carried scars of battle - from dark forces, from elemental beings, from demon skirmishes, from education. Minor imperfections were to be expected and so were not imperfections at all. They were none of them identical, but most angels were not so scarred. The Flocks of Heaven were built from a Holy purity. Even if an angel’s Grace had been too grievously injured to heal themselves in good time, a brother or sister would carry the task.

Most of the most grievous injuries Castiel carried could have been healed by another, but he’d been alone.

It gave many angels pause to look upon him. Even now, so diminished. To see how much he had endured outside the strength of a Flight, even cut off from the Host.   

It also reminded them of why he’d been alone.

A millennia of life had left him with a few chipped talons, lines of feathers that grew in too dim, the pathways of his Grace’s energy disrupted where grave wounds had been lain but had been tended to by other angel’s hands. Uriel had always been quick to his aid, a dutiful soldier in all things. Balthazar had always cheered him. Benjamin and Annael had always been kind, too kind for most of their species to grasp. It was not a thing that came easily to them.

In this last breath of time, less than a century, Hell, Heaven, Lucifer, a lingering War, the Leviathan, Purgatory, Metatron, and Lucifer again, he’d been rent apart, and that last terrible theft had by far cost him the most. To subsume himself for Lucifer’s use had reduced him yet further; the scorched extremities of his Grace had gone dim, the rent lines where he’d been restored at Stull gone dark and deep like fault lines in dust.

He was no longer that creature of some glory, whom demons had cowered from outside their haven below this earth, who had raised lightning and shadow to gift Dean Winchester with awe

Too anyone who could really see him he was wretched to look upon. A mutilated empty shell, dimly lit by Grace so diffuse he barely glowed.

He was literally a shadow of his former self.

This body, this changeling echo of Jimmy Novak’s form, this emptied vessel, had become a refuge. He avoided looking upon the edges of his own form, the aura of angelic energy that clung to the outlines of an occupied vessel, that moved in advance of its physical motions. He could see the askew outline around his left arm. He glimpsed himself as he truly was sometimes in mirrors. The features of his vessel were more familiar and more pleasing now than his own. He frequently forgot the outlines of his original face. This face was his now, in a way. This flesh become almost his, with its scars and tattoos and longings.

Castiel still never forgot that even now, the sight of him would blind Sam or Dean instantly.

His legs were as graceful as they’d ever been, his hands just as skilled with blade and fist, the missing second left hand not really that much to compensate for. The unusable eyes did not affect his sight. He was as stealthy and keen in battle as he’d ever been.

But even with so many years of memories, so many tasks before him, his head felt hollowed and slowed. Thoughts skittered past him like errant feathers. He wasn’t sure why. He ached, like his memories of human bruises. He was so tired, all the time. No amount of starlight or geothermic energy, no amount of human sleep or food, no amount of time spent in the comfort of nearness with those two precious and scarred familiar human souls could hope to even touch it.

His Grace was an ember, a droplet, a wisp, barely enough to maintain his vessel and give it strength, barely enough to heal and see and hear, but it was a steady little glow. It kept him of use, even if it did not warm him anymore.

To Billie and to the previous Death, he’d looked as a zombie from one of Dean’s strange movies, or perhaps a sad instance of roadkill, something lingering far past his time. Billie had avoided looking upon him. Her fibrous, elongated, wingless form hovered around the back of her avatar, her empty gaze fixed on the Winchesters.

His body had worked in his favor then, as it once had before, striding into Heaven, with his scarred face and covered in gleaming tears where he’d been raised anew, to refuse the stubborn will of an Archangel. Even Raphael had paused at the sight of him.

His wings ached now, riding in the car. He sometimes missed the days when he’d thought it odd and confining. The smells of a vehicle were a comfort now. He took up less space.

Castiel had missed Benjamin, known he remained on earth, had heard his voice occasionally in song but had not sought him out. He hadn’t felt he had the right anymore. Now he regretted that dearly.

To human eyes there’d been little reaction or movement when he’d greeted Mirabel and Ishim. Humans might have embraced or shook hands with old friends. Castiel had smiled with his familiar face, clicked and flicked his ragged tails in a greeting the humans could not hear or see.

Mirabel had recoiled at the sight of him so changed and wretched, shoulders flicking back and wing bones mantling before her vessel had stood seconds later. Ishim had not moved of course, his steady, obstinate patience had gained him their command and loyalty so long ago, but his mouths twisted with contempt before Castiel sat down across from him.

He had not expected to be greeted with kindness. He was used to the open disgust from his own kind at the state of him, especially those who had not known him before things changed, those who didn’t have a complete grasp of which crimes he had and had not committed. He was used to the blame for the disfigurement they all now carried. His decisions had led them to it.

He hadn’t anticipated such clear distaste from those he’d once counted as closest friends. He hadn’t anticipated the sharp blow of their genuine belief that just because he no longer belonged to the Host, was considered Fallen by most, that he would not care for their pain.

He wanted to protest it, but stayed silent. Castiel knew he’d killed more angels himself than any other angel that still lived. Not even counting the ones who had died because of his choices.

That every angel carried such terrible, inescapable scars now had only made it worse, the disgust that was instinctive before, now they knew how such marring _felt_. They were not a creature that was meant to live in this state. It was abhorrent. Only the most Fallen lived like this.

(Castiel could not bear the occasional thought of how he resembled Lucifer.)

His friends, his human friends, were blind to these things. To them he must seem much the same as he always had.

The ways he’d learned to think as a human did, to consider all doubts and affections and potential griefs before acting was not something he regretted. That knowledge was hard earned and he still believed himself the better for it. He knew other angels would never understand it, not really. Perhaps Annael would have, before she’d gone mad. Perhaps Benjamin would have listened and understood. He’d known Ishim would not, and still he’d protested when Ishim called him ‘gooey’.

Dean rested a warm, gentle hand against Castiel’s left shoulder, set a cold bottle of beer in front of him. His fingers curled in a muted caress as he passed behind him.

Dean did not see his shortened secondary left arm, did not see how dim and crumpled the feathers under his hand were, did not see the crookedly healed mandibles on Cas’s left side twitch open in anticipation of the fizzy texture of the beer. Did not see how his real eyes slitted almost closed with pleasure at the kind touch.

Sam did not see how the ragged remnants of his ruff pricked up and tried to flare on the side where he sat so near, did not see how one wing reached unconsciously to shield him at the sudden note of sorrow from his soul, how the cicatrix flesh around empty ringing bones seemed to creak and warp with the effort, a sharp talon inches from Sam’s face, the few tattered flight feathers left to Castiel flared out as useless shelter along his side.

They drank together.

Castiel was so grateful they could not see him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone interested in rambling meta about mentally controlled, inter-dimensional, crystalline plasma beings and their physicality - let me know. I can definitely go on. Thanks for reading.


End file.
